A DAY IN THE LIFE
The work day differs from day to day, month to
month, and season to season for
NARAS's Melissa Blazer. In December, January,
and February, prior to the annual
Grammy Awards show, the thrust is producing the
program book. Blazer is involved in
the pretelecast program. She oversees print
collateral for continuing and special pro-
jects, and the live webcast of the awards and
web site updates. She is also involved in the
advance preparation of the
Grammy Magazine issue that comes out
immediately fol-
lowing the awards. In the summer, the Latin
Grammy Awards are the thrust. Other
times of the year are spent with continuing
projects and events planning, maintaining
the web site, and continuing to
publish
Grammy Magazine and other collateral
mate-
rial for NARAS.
POINTERS FOR THE JOB SEARCH
"Get a really good education. Get a really good
education. Get a really good edu-
cation. Intern and volunteer as much as you
can. There are some great opportunities
that lead to good jobs, but it also gives a
young person an opportunity to see if they
like something."
MELISSA BLAZER, PUBLICATIONS MANAGER
FOR
NARAS AND MANAGING EDITOR OF GRAMMY
MAGAZINE
When Melissa Blazer says "I don't really have
any mercy" on interns and those
working under her command, it is because she
has been there in the trenches doing
the "scud work," and that is what brought about
her current success. With an under-
graduate degree in English from Rutgers
University, Blazer went on to study journal-
ism at the University of Missouri at Columbia.
She worked as a news and sports
writer at the college radio station, where she
first became interested in music. "There
was an upperclassman working there and she was
really, really cool. She had wild
punk hair and she was always smashing records.
I was just a geeky newsgirl. I wanted
to be like her." While she continued to write
and deliver the news, Blazer picked up
more and more music shifts as well. Still in
college, she landed her first editorial job
at an alternative newsweekly in Kansas City.
Over the next seven years, she bounced
between the city's two weeklies.
"I was an Arts and Entertainment (A&E)
editor, doing a lot of managing editor
duties, but mostly A&E, and primarily
music. I spent a really, really long time honing
my skills and being exposed to a tremendous
amount of music on all different levels.
I started from the bottom. I spent years and
years working with the local club pro-
moters and concert promoters, and the local
blues and jazz festivals, and the Blues
Foundation. It was all volunteer mind you.
That's the key word: volunteer! When
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